Rogue builds
The Rogue is primarily a melee damage dealer. This section lists common talent builds for both dagger and sword. Talent builders can be used to test different builds or slight variants on the ones listed below, and links as well as details can be found on the Rogue talent page. Because talent trees were significantly altered in the 2.0.3 patch, old talent builds have been discarded and new talent builds have been developed. Listed below you will find several common and popular talent builds that have been tuned to maximize effectiveness. These were originally taken from the stickied forum post on the official rogue forums, but most have been heavily edited to adapt to patches. Level 70 Dagger Builds Combat Daggers - 15/41/5 Combat Daggers is a PvE build for high raid damage. It depends on Backstab and maintaining Slice and Dice to do most of its damage. Before the Burning Crusade expansion it was the highest damage build available, but currently is roughly equal to Combat Swords/Fists. Due to the nature of Combat Potency, overall regen is largely determined by the quality and speed of your offhand dagger 1.3-1.5 Mutilate - 41/20/0 - PvE If your focus is PvE and raiding, you'll need to improve your sustainable dps with combat talents. Dual-wield specialization is the key here, in addition to a huge increase in white damage, it will actually improve your mutilate damage as well. Also, you can never go wrong with improved slice and dice and precision. The same rules apply to you as to combat rogues: white damage is king. Don't ignore your hit rating and AP. Mutilate - 41/0/20 - PvP If your focus is PvP, taking subtlety talents will give you higher burst damage and improved ability to stunlock. Having 3/3 Initiative, and 5/5 Sealfate makes it very simple to stock up on combo points. Just open up with a cheap shot and mutilate and you're ready to kidney shot. You can then use cold blood and mutilate to quickly generate more combo points for an eviscerate. Seal Fate / Premed - 30/0/31 This is a versatile build that takes burst damage and combo point generation from Seal Fate and adds cooldown management with Prep. Dirty Deeds, Premed and Initiative. It offers the ability to open with 5 CP for huge opening and CB for high finishing damage. Imp Ambush with CB for big openers, and Elusiveness for shorter cooldowns. These advantages make it a great PvP build but with Hemo, cheap CS/Garotte and incredible combo point generation it also is an effective PvE build. Shadowstep Build - 20/0/41 This is a PvP build that features extremely high burst damage. It gives you use of all of the good subtlety talents and just enough of the assassination ones to give you the extra power you need. It also provides +10% Attack Power and +15% agility. Sword/Fist/Mace Builds Combat Swords - 19/42/0 Combat swords is currently recognized as the best boss damage build, but by a slim margin. This is because when your offhand sword gets an extra attack from sword specialization, it is actually an extra main hand attack, which does much more damage. You'll want a quick offhand, Latro's Shifting Sword from Black Morass for beginners. The next best upgrade is S2 Gladiators Sword. You can take this build and sub in Fist Spec for combat fists. You are better off with a 1.3s dagger like Warp Splinter's Thorn than with any of the low level off-hand fists. The arena season 2 offhand fist is 1.5s, and is the next best upgrade to the dagger and should be taken. Both fist weapons from Al'ar are great as well. Going with Mace spec and some better pvp talents also make for a great build with S2 Gladiator's weapons. The DPS in raids is not as strong as swords and fists, but still respectable. Combat PVE Hemo - 11/28/22 With the coming changes to hemo and some of the sub talents this build becomes a strong contender to combat swords for #1 DPS with the appropriate gear. With hemo now being normalized weapon speed is actually no longer a concern with hemo builds. The weapon with the best average damage is your choice. Keeping a fast OH will still be good for poison and other procs, but not the necessity it is for combat builds. There are some filler choices here, but not many. 1 point in DD and 2 points in WE are how you finish this out for best DPS. If you are using any other weapon, you'd want to take that weapon specialization (fists or maces). If you have 2 different weapons, get 2 that are the same. This build becomes a relic in Patch 2.3.2 Old School PvP Hemo - 26/3/32 Stunlocks got harder to do in BC, with the massive stamina pool increase and the introduction of resilience. However, in arenas with teammates aiding the damage, stunlocking can still be deadly and frustrates your opponent to no end. With hemo and improved gouge, this build is certainly the way to do it. You can achieve near perfect stunlocks with good timing. You can also use sleight of hand in this build for an extra 2% resilience-esque action instead of something else in the sub tree. This build is for PvP only and is very inferior to AR/Prep until 2.3.2 AR/Prep - 0/31/30 A PvP (Arena) build typically used with maces for the stun proc. Can be viable in PvE, but does not compete with 11/28/22 hemo or Combat builds using swords (even falls short of combat maces). ARx2 (Adrenaline Rush used twice) because of Prep is potent for arena battles. Some would skip elusivness for 2 in sleight of hand for the Resilience-like affect of that talent since you already have Prep to deal with CDs. Bladeflurry is also a gem. Using hemo as your primary attack give you the debuff and serrated blades will stack with much of the armor reducing gear available in S3 arena play. The 2.3 buffs to the sub tree make this a strong, cookie cutter arena build. Patch 2.3.2 reduces the usefulness of this build and makes it near obsolete. Old level 60 builds Please see Rogue builds/Level 60 Leveling to 60 For soloing, grinding, and leveling, you will want to focus on swords and put a majority of your points into the Assassination and Combat trees. Leveling with daggers is possible, especially with a group, but is less efficient soloing than leveling with swords. Until you start partying regularly, and doing instances, you will want to stick with swords as your primary weapons. Sword/Dagger is perfectly fine until you take sword specialization, after which time you will want to get yourself a speedy, high DPS sword for your offhand. Note: If you DO choose to solo-level with daggers you want to focus as much as possible on high burst damage as it will be harder to rely on out-lasting enemies with sustained DPS. Make sure your daggers are close to your level and spend talent points in burst DPS like Opportunity, Improved Ambush, and Improved Eviscerate. Ghostly Strike is also a good investment. A well-geared and talent spec'd Rogue can open a fight with Ambush, Ghostly Strike, Gouge, Backstab and then Eviscerate and get their enemy well below 50% in a matter of seconds before Ghostly Strike has worn off and you begin taking significant damage. Levels 10-39 * Improved Sinister Strike 2/2 * Remorseless Attacks 2/2 * Malice 3/5 * Ruthlessness 3/3 * Malice 5/5 * Relentless Strikes 1/1 * Lethality 5/5 * Murder 2/2 * Improved Eviscerate 2/3 * Cold Blood 1/1 * Improved Kidney Shot 3/3 * Improved Eviscerate 3/3 * Seal Fate 3/5 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fGebox0scZM Level 40 (Respec) * Improved Sinister Strike 2/2 * Improved Gouge 3/3 * Deflection 5/5 * Riposte 1/1 * Endurance 2/2 * Precision 5/5 * Dual Wield Specialization 5/5 * Blade Flurry 1/1 * Sword Specialization 5/5 * Aggression 1/3 * Adrenaline Rush 1/1 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fZG0Ed0Vzx0oo Levels 41-60 * Aggression 3/3 * Improved Eviscerate 3/3 * Malice 3/5 * Murder 2/2 * Malice 5/5 * Relentless Strikes 1/1 * Lethality 5/5 * Ruthlessness 2/3 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=fhgboxZG0Ed0Vzx0ho Category:Guides Category:Rogue Talents